


Shades

by Lady_Gadfly



Series: Reylo Week [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Fandom
Genre: A little angst, Brief mentions of blood and violence, F/M, Pregnancy, mostly just fluff, the fish nuns do not approve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-27 03:40:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14416896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Gadfly/pseuds/Lady_Gadfly
Summary: The different colours that define Rey's life.Written for Reylo week 2018. Theme: colours. I couldn't pick a colour so I used them all.





	Shades

Jakku is yellow.

Rey’s earliest memory is yellow sand stretching on and on as far as the eye can see. Yellow so glaringly bright that looking at it would blind you. The relentless sun beating down so hard sometimes that the sky itself seemed bleached out, worn thin and ruined just like everything else on Jakku.

She remembers bottles and glasses of strong smelling amber coloured liquid. Shards and slivers of glass littering the floor.

She remembers a woman’s wrists, mottled a sickly yellow with old bruises, her hands shaking as she drains another bottle and then smashes it over a man’s head.

Madness is a legitimate problem in the desert. The heat drives people to insanity, thirst making people gorge themselves on unclean, stagnant water that has been sitting too long. Rey knows as well as they do that it will make them sick. They can’t stop themselves. They’ll go jaundiced and swollen bellied, parasites eating at their insides, begging for water at the end. To quench their thirst, to ease their fever.

Rey is very, very careful with rationing her water. Very, very careful with cleaning the debris and pus from every little scrape and scratch she receives. Jakku kills. It kills easily and often. And no-one misses you when you go.

Nothing is new on Jakku. Everything is inherited or stolen or scavenged. Children inherit property, inherit prejudices, inherit anger and hate and bitterness. Nothing is good on Jakku, no-one ever leaves Jakku to do great things, no-one becomes truly successful on Jakku. Even the junk merchants are only a few steps further away from poverty than their workers, and they know it.

They’re living in the graveyard of a battle that was supposed to be the end of an empire. It wasn’t.

They pick over corpses of felled destroyers and at-ats. And if Rey comes across the old bleached bones of someone who died in a long ago battle, or some poor scavenger who came before her and took a fall, she takes the time to kick sand over them and think a few words of respect. She can’t do much else.

This place will grind her down eventually. No matter how she rages against it, Rey knows she’s fighting a losing battle. She sees it in the worn husks of women cleaning machinery at the cleaning stations, the thousands of tally marks scratched into the walls of her home. She’s long since lost count. That’s not why she does it any more. She lies in her cot at night, listening to the wind moving the sand and swears she can _feel_ something being scoured away from her. The pain of loss made worse by her total inability to articulate what it actually is that she’s losing.

She has to leave before this place breaks her.

She sits outside the walker and places the rebel pilot helmet on her head, the tinted glass of the visor turning the sands around her a deeper yellow.  

She waits.

****  
  
The resistance is blue.

The console lights cast the faces of everyone in the war room with a bluish glow. They look spectral, bright eyed and haunted as they fight desperately with what little they have.

Rey likes exploring the planets they make port on (never for very long), and especially loves the ones with lots of water and life and greenery. Once she goes off to train in a nearby forest, leaving with stern instructions from Leia to keep an active comm link open. She spends a little time moving through her forms, then lies back and watches clouds scudding across the sky. The sky is such a soft blue here. The shifting light and dark as clouds move across the sun and the leaves move in the breeze lulls her into a trance, and before she knows it Poe is on the comm telling her to get back to base.

When Finn asks her what she was doing she replies “Meditating, mostly.” It’s not exactly a lie.

The first time she fires up her new saberstaff the blue beams crackle in such a familiar way that her hands start to shake. She powers it down quickly. The beams are as stable as they can be, Rey had made sure of that. It’s a beautifully made weapon, meticulously researched and designed. Finn and Rose had gone on a special infiltration mission to get her schematics from some old archive on one of the core worlds. The mission was incredibly dangerous, and Rey yelled at them for at least ten minutes before hugging them in gratitude.

Leia looks at her steadily from the doorway of the room they’re using as a makeshift armoury.

“General, I…I didn’t hear you come in.” _For a woman leaning heavily on a cane she still moves as quiet as a lothcat_ , Rey thinks ruefully.

The general gives a crooked smile and makes her way over to the workbench Rey is standing by. She’s moving slower these days, but with no less poise and elegance.

“That’s a magnificent weapon Rey, you should be proud.” There’s a heavy pause. “The beam is very…” Leia trails off meaningfully and Rey swallows, mouth suddenly dry.

“When the saber broke, the kyber crystal split as well. It wasn’t a clean break they…cracked.”

“Luke’s old saber.” Leia murmurs.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t-“

The general waves her hand dismissively. “Don’t apologise Rey. Besides, wouldn’t you need two crystals to make a staff anyway? It’s near impossible to get kyber anywhere in the galaxy these days. The Force knew what it was doing.”

Rey thinks of the throne room, fire raining down around her as she put every ounce of strength into pulling the saber towards her. Of a force at the other end pulling just as hard back.

“I think so too. But I still…I just…I wish it didn’t have to be like this.” To Rey’s mortification she feels her voice break, tears pricking her eyes.

Leia places her hands over Rey’s. They’re cold, and Rey can see blue veins underneath thin papery skin. _Blue bloods_ , she thinks dumbly. _They call royals blue bloods._

“Me too, dear.” Leia has tears in her eyes as well. “Me too.” 

****  
  
Ben is red.

Rey had read of the process of bleeding a crystal. How you had to force your hate and pain and anger into the crystal until it was corrupted and took on a red hue.

Ben, of course, had gone too far with it and poured so much of his pain into the crystal that it fractured, creating an unstable beam. It was only when Rey began researching how to make her own saber that she realised just how dangerous Ben’s weapon really was. The rather ostentatious quillons were there to vent excess power. Without them they whole weapon would explode as soon as it was activated.

And wasn’t that just Ben all over. Too much power, too much anger, too much emotion, too much of everything. She wonders sometimes how he doesn’t just fly apart completely with the burning maelstrom going on inside him.

Rey should be frightened. She should run away, send co-ordinates to the resistance of the uninhabited backwater planet they tentatively agreed to meet up on through the bond. They came to talk but within a short span of time they had ignited their sabers and were striking and parrying, Ben giving pointers on how to better kill him. She’s not sure if they’re actually fighting or if they’re sparring, all she knows is this is possibly the calmest she’s ever felt Ben. His rage has subsided and he’s focused on correcting her footwork even as she slashes at him.

The heat within him is still there, but it’s different. Softer, somehow. Rey falters and as she missteps Ben’s eyes snap to hers and she knows. Feels the same heat low in her belly.

Rey catches hold of the front of his shirt the same time he grabs her round the waist. Their lips press together awkwardly, desperately. Neither of them has much of an idea what they’re doing but Rey can’t bring herself to care. Not about the Resistance or the First Order or the Jedi or any of it. Not when every part of her soul is reaching out for Ben, not when she can feel him reaching back.

Deactivated sabers fall to the ground and so do they, tearing at each other’s clothes in their desperation to feel skin against skin. Rey rakes her fingernails down his broad, pale back hard enough to draw tiny beads of blood and Ben moans. He presses bites and kisses down her neck and across her breasts as he pushes across the bond how much he loves her, how he needs her, the sheer intensity of his emotion stealing Rey’s breath.

Of course their first time is like this, this mix of tenderness and roughness, passion and pain in equal measure. How could it be anything else?

When he enters her, she winces. It’s not out of pain, Rey is accustomed to pain. It’s just so strange having someone physically inside of her. Ben stills over her, his face flushed, lips swollen.

“Do you want me to stop?” Ben frowns and begins to move away, only for Rey’s legs to lock around his hips.

“ _Don’t you kriffing dare_.” She manages to grit out, shifting her hips experimentally.

It takes them a moment to find a good rhythm, but it helps when you can literally read your partner’s mind. Ben fucks the same way he fights, throwing his whole being into it. She puts a suggestion across the bond, showing Ben how she touches herself, and he immediately slips a hand between them to rub against her clit in a way that has her positively _wailing_ underneath him.

She reaches her climax just before he does, clawing at Ben’s back and biting his shoulder as the ripples of her orgasm push him over the edge. He shouts as he spills into her, mind blissfully blank.

By the time their sweat has dried he’s apologising, and Rey considers smacking some sense into him.

“Why the hell are you apologising? You know I wanted that right? You did feel how much I enjoyed that? Please tell me you could tell that I enjoyed that.”

“Yes, I could tell you enjoyed that.” There’s a hint of smugness in his voice, but she decides he’s earned it. “I just…I had planned this differently.”

“You planned this?” Rey grins. “What did you have planned? Dim lighting, flowers and romantic music?”

Ben has the good grace to flush. He had, in fact, envisaged something like the cheesy holo-romance scene Rey is describing. “I meant for there to be a bed at least.” He mutters.

Rey’s laughter peals out, soon joined by Ben’s rumbling chuckle. Seeing him so carefree makes Rey feel lightheaded. He looks so much younger when he smiles.

He pulls his cape over them, and for a while they just hold each other. Neither wants to be the one to say it.

“Ben. We can’t do this.”

“I know.”

“It’s dangerous.”

“It is.”

There is another agonising pause.

“What do we do now?”

Ben shifts uncomfortably. The planet is warm but the ground is hardly the most comfortable place to be having this conversation.

“The plan you came up with, we should go ahead with it. It’s very risky but if we pull it off, we can end this war now.”

“And be together?”

Ben presses his lips to her forehead.

“And be together.” _Provided we both survive._

“I heard that.” Rey pokes his chest. “I’m not dying on you and you’re not dying on me Ben Solo, not when I just got you back.”

“I assure you sweetheart, dying is the last thing I intend to do.”

****  
  
The new Jedi order is grey.

The first place they go to is Ach-to.

“Well, you showed me the way here eventually.” Ben gives a lopsided grin from the co-pilot’s seat. He’s changed since the war ended, still with his moments of darkness but the light within him getting brighter, strengthened by Rey’s love and a new purpose in life.

Rey just rolls her eyes and punches in the landing co-ordinates.

The caretakers like Ben straight off, more than they have ever liked Rey. Within a week Ben has picked up snippets of whatever ancient language they speak and utterly charms the fish women by making polite conversation in their native tongue.

“Why do they call you The Destroyer?” His eyes are twinkling as he says it, and Rey fully expects the caretakers have told him of every little incident that lead to that ignoble nickname.

“You remember the time I told you about the mirror cave?”

“Don’t change the subject.” _Stop trying to distract me._

“That was in that hut.” She points across the courtyard. _I’m not trying. I’m succeeding._ “They rebuilt it. You want to pay a visit?” She saunters across the open space, pushing across the bond an image of Ben pressing her against the stone walls of the domed hut as she screams his name.

Ben almost trips over his feet rushing to follow her. She succeeds in distracting him. Thoroughly.

When they emerge from the hut a while later, a caretaker narrows her eyes at them from across the way and mutters something. Rey doesn’t understand the words but the tone is universal.

“Ugh, what is she saying?”

“You don’t want to know.”

One morning she leads Ben to the room where Luke had told her the first lesson. They sit by the pool with the mosaic of the prime Jedi, discussing the texts Rey had taken. Ben is working on translating some of the older texts, going into raptures over the beauty of the penmanship and the complexity of the grammar rules of whatever ancient dialect it is written in. Rey understands less than half of it but doesn’t care, simply happy to gaze at Ben as he lights up talking about something he’s passionate about.

She’s reading one of the texts when Ben stands up to stretch his legs. His footsteps echo around the stone cavern, and it isn’t until the silence stretches out Rey realises he’s stopped. She looks up, and sees Ben standing by the platform where she first consciously reached out to the force.

Ben is very still, his hands clenched.

She approaches him cautiously. He’s never hurt her, but he’s still having moments where the darkness overwhelms him. She suspects he always will. He’s had a long run of good days lately and she wants to hold on to that for as long as possible.

She calls out to him softly, and he starts, whirling round to meet her.

“You ok?”

“Luke. He was here. This is where he-“ He breaks off, hot tears spilling down his face, and Rey can feel the agony and shame washing over him.

She wants to say something. She wants to make it better, to take the pain of losing his father and uncle and mother from him. She can’t. She knows Ben will never be free of this, not really. He’ll always be caught between the light and the dark, fighting that battle within himself for the rest of his life.

She just holds him.

It’s a week later that Ben announces that he’s going into the cave. Rey’s first instinct is to tell him not to, afraid of what the mirror might show him, scared that it might shatter what little fragile happiness he’s been able to find.

But she realises it’s not her place to take this from him. She needed to see what the Force had to show her, so does Ben.

It doesn’t stop her from pacing nervously outside their hut waiting for him to come back though. The sky is a leaden stormy grey and the choppy waters surrounding the island are the same colour. She hears one rumble of thunder, then another, and the sky is split with a fork of lightning. The sky darkens and rain starts pelting down. Still she stands outside the hut, shivering, arms wrapped around her as she squints through the storm for a familiar hulking figure. She tries reaching out across the force bond but it’s uncharacteristically quiet, which terrifies her.

She’s just about made up her mind to run down to the cave, her mind filled with images of Ben bloodied and broken, when he trudges up the steps to the gathering of stone huts. His face is hidden underneath his hood. When they get into their hut he hangs up his cloak, takes off his boots, and starts undressing for bed. He doesn’t say a word, his face is blank. Not sure what else to do, Rey does the same, slipping into bed next to him.

The bonds is still silent and when Rey reaches out she finds Ben has closed himself off from her, which he almost never does. The silence makes her edgy, fidgeting until Ben puts a strong arm around her and pulls her to his chest. Finally he speaks.

“I’ve been thinking, about what we were discussing regarding taking the best parts from the dark and light sides in the new order.”

Rey looks up at him. Ben is gazing up at the ceiling, his face no longer blank but serene. The bond is still shut and Rey realises that Ben is keeping something from her, feeling a spike of anxiety as she wonders what he saw in the cave. His eyes are red-rimmed but he seems calm.

“I think that in the new order, we should allow relationships. Jedi should be allowed to love, and marry, and have children.”

He opens the bond finally and Rey gasps. His dark eyes gaze into hers as he lets the depth of his feelings for her flow through their bond. He wants all of those things, with her.

“Yes.” The word is out of her mouth before she can stop it. “Stars, Ben _yes_.”

He doesn’t seem to mind that she didn’t let him ask her out loud.

****  
  
Their new life is purple.

Rey had insisted that the new training temple be built on a planet with lots of greenery and water, and Ben is more than happy to oblige. When the former resistance had bargained with the Republic to let Ben live, they had agreed on the condition that the new Jedis pick an uninhabited planet on the outer rim to build their temple. Rey is free to come and go as she pleases but it is understood that for Ben, this is a permanent banishment to be broken on pain of death. Considering the alternative, Ben is happy to oblige.

He scours the systems looking for a suitable planet, and when he finds one he comms Rey to come immediately.

When she lands, Ben is standing there with a bunch of small, sweet-smelling purple flowers grasped in his massive hand, presenting them to her with a flourish.

“My wedding gift to you.” He’s beaming as Rey takes the flowers and leaps into his arms, peppering her husband’s face with kisses.

“It’s perfect.” The planet is lush and beautiful, and Rey loves it on sight.

The process of building and establishing the temple is even more difficult than they both had anticipated. Even with help from many of the former resistance and first order members and even some republic workers that Finn somehow manages to wrangle for a time, construction is slow going. People are still wary of Ben, and he tries very hard to hide how it affects him. The stress of the project is making both of them lose sleep, and both have dark violet smudges under their eyes.

Rey has been on several missions to find potential padawans, and they now have a handful of children waiting in a core world orphanage for the temple to be complete so they can begin their training. Both Rey and Ben have agreed that they will not be taking children from their families at infancy, as the old Jedi order did. But both are equally adamant that force-sensitives need to be taught how to harness their powers, both for their safety and others.

It’s several months later than planned when they finally take in their first students, and they’re not remotely ready. Trying to keep the children on task whilst meditating is like trying to herd Porgs, keeping them awake during Jedi history lessons is nigh impossible, and the first few saber form lessons result in several spectacular dark purple bruises on students and teachers alike.

But eventually they fall into a routine. Eventually they feel like they know what they are doing.

So naturally something happens to throw them off.

Rey falls ill. She starts feeling tired for no reason and gets queasy in the mornings. It isn’t until she checks the calendar on her datapad that she realises she’s skipped her last two periods. She’d not had regular periods until joining the resistance and starting to put on weight, and between that and the stress of keeping their padawans from misbehaving she’d lost track. She sends a discreet comm to Rose asking her to make sure a med droid and a test is included in the next supplies shipment.

She’s sure Ben will sense the small life growing within her through the Force some time soon, he’s already caught on that there’s something going on when she starts being very careful what she puts through the bond. It’s important to Rey that she be absolutely sure, and that she tells him herself out loud.

The shipment arrives and the med droid confirms Rey’s suspicion. Really she can feel the life inside her already, but she wants to know it’s healthy before she tells Ben.

She goes to where Ben is trying, and failing, to walk the children through the Shii-Cho.

“Rey, can you come over here? I need to demonstrate…” He trails off. Rey is beaming, practically running over to him before throwing her arms around him to whisper in his ear. He freezes.

Then suddenly his lips are pressed against hers, the padawans making vomit noises at the sight of their two masters, already unnecessarily lovey-dovey in their opinion, making out in the middle of the training area.

“Class is dismissed.” Ben says, barely taking his lips off Rey’s.

Rey knew pregnancy would change her body, but she’s still not happy with the reddish-purple stretch marks that stripe across her belly. Ben kisses them and tells her she’s never looked more beautiful.

The med droid drops another bomb on her at her latest check-up. She’s trying to work out how to tell Ben when he gives her the perfect opportunity.

“Rose sent a message. She’s making a baby blanket, she wants to know if it should be pink or blue?”

“Hmm?” Rey is pressing her hands against her belly, the droid said she should start feeling movement soon.

“You know, pink for a girl or blue for a boy?” Ben in the image of forced nonchalance, she can tell he’s dying to know.

“Funny you should mention that. I just found out today.” Rey smiles. “Tell her to make a purple one.”

“Purple?” Ben frowns. “Why purple?”

“One of each.”

“One of each? One of…” Realisation dawns on his face. “As in, two? We’re having two?!”

“It must run in your family.” Rey laughs.

Ben falls to his knees in front of where she is sitting, kissing her belly.

“Rey you’re amazing. I love you so much I- oh kriff.” He reaches for the datapad and starts typing furiously.

“What is it?”

“I’m telling them to double the amount of baby stuff in the next supplies shipment.” He pauses. “And to include a crate of Corellian whiskey, I think I’m going to need it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Well it's a bit late but here we go. I wrote this last minute and it is unbeta'd so please excuse any errors.


End file.
